In Paris, the Eiffel Tower was closed due to a staff strike

One of the main attractions of Paris – the Eiffel Tower – was closed to visitors on Wednesday. The reason was a staff strike. The workers accuse the management company of the fact that it focuses only on profit and does not pay enough attention to technical support and repair of the tower.

The CGT trade union, which organized the strike, stated in its statement that the purpose of the action was to draw attention to the shortcomings of the management company’s financial policy. According to the activists, the management underestimates the number of citizens and tourists who visit the tower every year and the necessary costs for maintaining it in good condition. They warn that if technical problems continue to be ignored, then by the time the Olympic Games in Paris open in 2024, the tower may be closed to tourists for technical reasons.

Employees have repeatedly warned that the tower is in poor technical condition.

Activists call the policy of SETE, which manages the towers, “ambitious and inconsistent.” According to them, SETE, when forming the budget, calculates that 7.4 million tourists should visit the tower annually, but such a number has not been there in a single year. Before the coronavirus pandemic, the number of visitors sometimes reached seven million, but then it sharply decreased, and in 2022 it increased to only 5.9 million.

The strike took place on the day of the centenary of the death of the creator of the attraction. Engineer Gustave Eiffel, who built the tower in 1889, died on December 27, 1923. The CGT trade union called the strike “a symbolic action on a symbolic day.” The big concert, timed to the date of Eiffel’s death, still took place, but it took place only at the foot of the tower.